Formerly the director of communications at the Tucson Jewish Community Center, HELEN GOMEZ BERNARD is now leading the external and alumni relations team at the University of Arizona College of Humanities.
Marsha Drozdoff, a clinical social worker for more than 30 years, launched her new website desertreikiconnection.com in September. She specializes in individual counseling for people facing health-related challenges including cancer, facilitates groups and teaches meditation/relaxation techniques. Drozdoff has been a certified Reiki master teacher since 2005.
Using the pen name of Casper Silk, Tucson author Germaine Shames has published “Hotel Noir” (Pale Fire Press). The novel, which the publisher calls “a tale of high stakes tikkun fearlessly told,” was also praised in the New York Journal of Books as “a noirish combination of F. Scott Fitzgerald and early P.D. James on steroids.”
Rebecca Seiferle was named Tucson Poet Laureate on Sep. 27 by Mayor Jonathan Rothschild. Seiferle is the author of four poetry collections. Most recently, “Wild Tongue” (Copper Canyon Press, 2007) won the 2008 Grub Street National Poetry Prize and “Bitters” (Copper Canyon Press, 2001) won the Western States Book Award and a Pushcart prize. Seiferle has been a resident of Tucson since 2006 when she moved from the Boston area where she was Jacob Ziskind poet-in-residence at Brandeis University. She teaches at Southwest University of Visual Arts.
